To be or not to be

Hi all,

   I watch a lot of movies, those who are with me know it better. But nowadays its most common among the youth of the nation, weekends are meant for movies, no matter whether the movie is good or bad, there are people who see them all. One thing I notice nowadays, there are some movies, which are good and realistic, but some look far over-fetched to an extent that they show normal heroes as super heroes. That’s altogether a different issue. Aye, speaking of heroes, portrayal of heroes has been one significant change when compared to old/mid films to the ones coming now.

 Movies which came in the early ages of cinema were mostly real life stories, so only good things appeared in the screen, though all movies had villains, the protagonist was always a good Samaritan, so no harm done so far. But, directors began to experiment with different generes of movies, and hence anti hero subjects began to come. Some anti hero movies are good I agree, but still the essence of the movie is good, but individually if we consider all scenes, are they good?? 

The traditional movies had the hero introduction scene as a goodwill act, while the villain’s intro will be a bad act as always, and either smoking or drinking, which is not necessary, but just to create a impact among the people that the character shown is bad one, they used those. Sadly, all this is archaic now.

Nowadays, hero’s introduction scenes have become the opposite, though the hero’s introduction remains to be a goodwill act or some gesture of a good personality, it shows the hero with either a cigar in his hand or a beer. If the movie’s protagonist is shown like smoking a cigarette or drinking beer, does it serve any good purpose? If the hero belongs to a slum or lower part of society, they are shown smoking a beedi, if middle class hero then cigarette, if college student or something like that beer bottle too finds it way in the screen. For fun part of the movie, it serves its purpose, but in the real world , there are many people who watch the movies repeatedly, and hence scenes and activities shown in the movies gets registered in their minds. As a result of which, people hardly realize the fact that smoking or drinking alcohol is harmful.

Am not making myself a follower of Ramadoss, who says heroes in movies should not smoke in screen, ( though he did that for a political motive, to target the superstar during release of his flick Baba ) , all I want to say is that, drinking and smoking are injurious. Nowadays people hardly realize that, just because hero in the movie are shown smoking, people follow it, and the irritating part in the whole episode is they make fun of the guys who don’t drink as unfit to be in this world.

 
Those who drink, say that they get to discover themselves more, as thoughts flow freely, and often they speak without controlling themselves. All they want is the inner peace , which those alcohol give them, for a short amount of time, but grow up , there are much better ways of attaining inner peace ( watching kung-fu panda2 for instance) than drinking or smoking. That too in IT field, weekend party means boozing away, for god sake, haven’t our parents or grandparents struggled , and yet managed to live in peace abstaining from these, and in fact those in business have to work all 7 days a week, and non-IT employees, have 6 working days a week, and we IT people work only 5 days a week, and still blame work pressure as the reason for these activities. Am not comparing the work loads, but still work is work , and we will get to kno the difficulties of them only if we do it, not just by seeing it.

The funnier thing on the whole part is hero’s shown with alcohol or smoking is never considered bad, this is what is called as paradigm shift.

Who is to blame for that, either the attitude of the people which changed allowing hero’s to drink and smoke or the directors who made it like that ??

Though the movies, show the statutory warning message before even the first scene of the movie is opened, people hardly notice that and its considered  just as one of the ads or the news reel which are put by theatre owners..

Though most of the popular heroes in tamil have made a decision that they wont smoke on screen, the trend is yet to pick up in bollywood, hopefully in the future, they pick up this also, along with the movies, which they pick up for remaking..

Celebrations or get-together need not have alcoholic beverages, it can just be with some nice chats than speaking in an unwanted manner, it will do with a calm dinner in a small hotel or even home than in a pub with smoke and drinks, but still there are educated people , who work in well known organizations get addicted to these bad things.. Well yea, to be or not to be is in ones own mind, and no one else can justify or change it..

 Bye til nex,

Hello World ! Mail for you

Hi all,
We live in digital era, and computers have become integral part of our life, more like a basic necessity for us. Of all things, Internet has become the most sought by people and really a very good invention by mankind. E-Mails have become the mode of communication, nobody bothers to send inland letters or post cards now, its all either email or a phone call. Internet can give you that too, mails voice calls, video calls etc. Even this blogging is a by-product of Internet, facebook, google all are big because they rule the internet. Gmail has become one of the most commonly used mail service throughout the world, and I still wonder why did they make the mail service free, when they began it. There are many service providers who give mail facility, but Gmail stands out. I am a fan of Google just like anyone else, and by the way to make things clear I love Microsoft too, not that I am biased, but Google looks much cooler in terms of their services in this mail scenario.
Gmail is not just another mail service, which provides mail facility, it has its own chat facility, through which we can send SMS’es, make voice calls, video calls even free of cost. This post is for some cool things I like about Gmail and may be one or two might be new to you even. I am not a good person in stats, so I have no idea about number of Gmail users, nor its history, this post is only about the features in Gmail.
Subject Line
The important thing in mails is the subject line which many of us miss while sending mails, Google pops up with a dialog box to tell you that you have the subject line empty, this may irritate you, but for people who use outlook for official purposes, know the importance of subject lines, and Outlook doesn’t pop you with that dialog box.

Attachments

The most common thing in mails is attachments, which everybody is aware of. But the interesting part is that Google offers us a better solution for it than just plain attachment service. Google not only checks on the subject line, but checks on the attachment part too, if we have text like ‘ find the attachment’ or ‘I have attached’ or some more similar text patterns it pops you up with a dialog box, if u had not attached anything in the mail. That’s really a cool thing to do, to serve its customer better. Also to be mentioned that not all patterns are matched but at least some are. ( Yahoo, another popular mail service doesn’t give you this.)

Most of us would click on the ‘Attach a file’ to attach files, but that’s not at all required, all we need is a drag and drop that will do it !! Probably, this came after Google wave came I suppose.




Recipients

Another important thing which I noticed recently is the auto suggest option coming up while composing mails, if we don’t use a distribution list or contact group, we add the recipient mail ID’s manually, and most of the times its sent to more than one, and we end up missing some or other. So now if you want to send mail to that set of people, whom you haven grouped in a list or group, if we just enter one mail id, automatically Google suggests you with other names, which you can just click to add. Cool isn’t it ? Google autosuggest is not just for searches, its used in Gmails even !!

Dots in mail id’s
Aye! This is the most common misconception, we think that having dots in our email IDs will help us to find a unused ID soon, and this is not true !! Even i thought the same, and I have a '.' in my mail id, send a mail to ur id without dot '.' in it, or even with any dots in ur id, for example mine is abc.def@gmail.com, u can send a mail to abcdef@gmail.com or a.b.c.def@gmail.com or any such pattern , it will always be delivered.. This feature is not in Yahoo.

Title bar change..

This is another interesting feature I came up on, most of the times we will have more tabs in our browser, and it has its width reduced to it. And standard Gmail inbox will have the title has Gmail - Priority Inbox (n)- abc@gmail.com or Gmail - Inbox (n) - abc@gmail.com ,the former being the case of Priority Inbox, the later the usual inbox. So if at all we get new mails , wont it be nice if we have it in the title bar itself, we need not go to the page to check whether mail has come. That feature is also there, display like Priority Inbox (n) -abc@gmail.com or Inbox(n) - abc@gmail.com , is possible through another labs feature in Gmail called, Title Tweaks.

Mouse Gestures

Most often we get mails which are more than one screen long, and most likely we have to scroll either up or down to find the next/previous button, in that case, wont it be good if we have an option in mouse to move back or front, Gmail gives us that. All we have to do is press the right button in the mouse, and move either left or right to move to the previous or next message. This feature is enabled through another labs setting, Mouse Gesture.

Undo a message sent

This is another important feature, which GMail has given us, if we didnt finish the mail properly, or forgot to put something, if we can decide that within seconds of pressing send , we can cancel it. Either we can stop sending, thats a standard feature, if the mail is being sent. If the mail is sent, and we want to revoke it, we can do it, now within 30 seconds, the reciever will never get the mail nor the notification that this mail has been revoked or something like that. But as of now the time frame is only 30 seconds. This feature can be invoked by a labs feature called Undo Send.

Google Map for address

Most of the times we have to send address to our friends to meet them, if we want to give them directions , we give them the directions through google maps link. But again the reciever has to open the link to check, and most of the cases in Google maps, we dont search with door numbers etc. But in mails, we send the address with door nos etc. So Gmail allows you to enable maps for the address you have mentioned in the mail, through another lab setting called Enabled Maps. As of now this feature is available only to address in US, and not in India.





SHVA

   Ever wondered what does SHVA mean ? Its not a typo of some other word (or my name:D). Have you ever noticed it while seeing your inbox ??? Hmmm, ok enough of making your grey cells thinking, it will be there in the address bar, as soon as we login , it will remain the same always, its definitely not the session parameter,which will change everytime we login. So wat does it mean ??? There is no official word on it, but as far i google'ed it means, Should Have Valid Authentication.

May be there are more features in Gmail, but these I felt are very nice and much cooler than the normal inbox. So if you want to understand what all Labs is about, Google Labs is the first place to be in.

Bye till nex,

P.S: This post is dedicated to all the people in Google, for their work to make this world cooler, and helping me to blog :)

Home ! Sweet home..

Hi all,

All we people are working now, and its always great to work, as we get paid for it, and we boast we deserve that. Due to advent of IT we all are in high tech cities now, some in Chennai, Coimbatore, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Gurgaon , and  of course abroad.. But still home is always home.

Home is where our heart is, though we are far away from home. I am happy for those people who are working in the same place as they grew. But most of the cases like mine are cases where people work in some other place, not in the place where they grew up.

Home is always home, we don’t mind whether there is a high speed broadband service, we don’t mind whether there is malls nearby to pass time, we don’t mind whether we have multiplexes to watch movies, we don’t care whether there are huge residential apartments, we don’t care for anything. My place doesn’t have any of the above, and most you people too will agree to it as ur place too doesn’t have those, but still home is always home.

Neyveli, the place where I grew up is the one I am going to speak about. For all you people unaware of this heaven on earth, it’s in Tamilnadu, near to Pondicherry. I grew up in the township in Neyveli, it’s a nice calm serene life style there, and I love it, and people who grew up there will always agree it. Neyveli doesn’t have multiplexes, township has total 2 theatres, and outside township which is also known as Neyveli has some theaters too, but no multiplexes, no Big Cinemas, no Adlabs, no PVR, no INOX, just a single theater Nidhiratna, which we all love. It’s a well planned township with lots of greenery, free space, inspired from Chandigarh actually.

Neyveli township was constructed by the Government of India for the employees of NLC , Neyveli Lignite Corporation to reside. NLC is one of the biggest power plant in India and it supplies to most of the parts in South India, not just TamilNadu. The main roads of Neyveli dividing each of the blocks are double-laned modern roads, constructed with rubberized top layer. The housing quarters are around 21,000 in number and vary between hostel-type buildings with 6 apartments to individual two-floor single cottage type quarters. Aye, speaking of roads, all my frens who have come to Neyveli , say roads are empty, there is no life, but I always ask them the same thing, if traffic is there we complain of traffic, ( Heck! Am in blore that says it all!! ) if there is no traffic, we say there is no life in it, this is ridiculous, we all live in digital era, and there is always a binary solution , either presence of traffic or no traffic, whichever you want you take it, as simple as that!!!

No other place can guarantee you to make your school friends to be in contact even after years, no other place can give you the feel that you will surely know one out of ten persons you go out of your home.

Neyveli has its own telecommunication wing, which provides intercom facilities to all houses inside township, and its free !! Neyveli can give you uninterrupted power supply, water supply too.

Of all things in earth , you may wonder why I am posting this, the reason is that my dad, got transferred to Tuticorin, which is in TamilNadu. Shifting from Neyveli to tuticorin is a mammoth task, Neyveli is near to Chennai and Pondicherry, while Tuticorin is near to Kanyakumari.

Though I was born in Tirunelveli, I will always tell my home as Neyveli, that’s how it was, and I guess its time to change that, hopefully only for a couple of years , hope my dad gets transferred back soon to Neyveli.

I never realized there are so many wonderful things in Neyveli, as people tell we usually wont realize the importance of something till we have it, I realize them all now. Anytime friends to drop you home from any corner in Neyveli, semester holiday cricket matches, day time carom, first day first show movies(any movie infact!! Not just big hero’s movies ) in Nidhirathna, late night bike rides in the deserted roads, cricket in our streets, breaking the glass windows of the houses, late night chats in Anjaneyar temple ground, and Archana hotel dinner, late night tea shop near central bus stand. There are some really funny things, we will walk 2 kms in night to go to a tea shop in bus stand, as it will be open in night time also, and return again, of all things just a 5rs tea( it was 3rs though when we started this ), was the one which we cherished for.  And the most important thing of all Pondicherry trips in bike and car. These all moments I will cherish forever, thanks to my friends who made those wonderful moments. I will never forget our first car trip to Pondicherry, while coming back l would have brutally killed all my friends by my driving, as I was driving for the first time in night, with specs, we managed to escape, and the walk in the bridge in Pondicherry, that’s not a easy cake walk, we had no support to walk, as we walked below the bridge and not over it, and that too for a guy  like me who don’t know swimming is like battle between life and death, when water below you is more than 20 feet deep.

The golden jubilee park, which is very near to my house, will always be remembered for our meetings, we all meet there to plan something important as we call it, and we will always be remembered as the persons who made the admin people to do a lot of changes, first week it was opened, I went with my neighbors, who are 3 to 4 yrs senior to me, and they played football and broke the light bulbs there, so in order to stop us from playin ther, they kept chairs inbetween and thereby reducing the free space, so that it will not give a big space to play..

The yearly book fair, the pani puri stall, the soup shop in main bazaar, pondicherry beach were our hang out places, which continued from our school time, and will continue to do so in future too. Though am moving out of Neyveli, I promise you my friends, whenever all you people assemble in Neyveli, I will surely come, cos there is always Abi, Gautham , Arun to pick me up :D

Bye til nex,